German Medium Trucks

Manufacturer: The Plastic Soldier Company
Scale: 1/100^th (15mm)
Size: Approximately 62mm long
Price: £19.50

http://www.theplasticsoldiercompany.co.uk/
Review By Paul Davies

As a keen WW2 wargamer I’m always keen to incorporate the challenges of ‘supply’, whether in the form of food, ammunition or even reinforcements into a game, because they add more layers and interest in my opinion and understandably I had been waiting expectantly for PSC’s German Medium Trucks to be released.

Were they worth the wait? In my opinion, generally ‘yes’.

For your £19.50 you get five sprues, each of which offers you the choice of making an Opel Blitz truck with GM cab, or a Mercedes L300 or, and this definitely caught my eye for the ‘quirky’; an Opel Maultier. You also get a choice of two cargo beds as well as a reasonable representation of a canvas tilt. Also included on each sprue are a jerry can and a spare tyre.

I was a bit disappointed to see that the command version shown on the box art cannot be built from the components in the box, but anyone reasonably proficient at scratchbuilding could relatively easily knock one up.

PROS: Five vehicles of this quality for less than £4 each is a good deal in anyone’s money and the set also provides several options to vary your models. Assembly is straightforward enough as long as you identify the parts carefully, particularly those that make up the cabs.

CONS: There were no instructions for building the Maultier, but its not that hard to work out. You just glue the track units (parts 35 and 36) to the Maultier sub chassis (part 34) and glue that assembly to the underside of the chassis (part 1), and having spoken to PSC I understand that they are intending to correct this omission. Next, not really a ‘Con’, more a personal preference; the cabs on these trucks all have solid windows and I prefer ‘open windows’ simply because I’m not very good at painting solid windows to look like glass.

So, if you need some good looking vehicles to move your troops, or transport supplies, give these German Trucks from the Plastic Soldier Company a try; they’re worth the money and I doubt that you’ll be disappointed.

There’s a lot of potential to modify these models, and you can make up your own loads for them, and since each sprue includes a pair of bench seats that can be fitted to the open version, you can add suitable seated figures from the PSC range to represent troops being moved up to the frontline or whatever.

I should think that any WW2 wargamer would find these models an asset.